by Wendy Weiss

I first wrote about “Marketing Insensitives” a few years ago. At the time, I had received a call from a telemarketer offering me some “marketing insensitives” to purchase a product. Yes, she really said this. She was not being clever; she just couldn’t pronounce “incentive.”

But, Marketing Insensitives do exist. They are the unfortunate, not-thought-through, ridiculous, dumb things that businesses do that drive customers away. Here are two new Marketing Insensitives–both from the same company. Read on:

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I’ve never had much interest in cooking. I’m one of those odd people who’s not that interested in food. I don’t think about it till I’m hungry and then I want something to eat. Living in NYC there are restaurants, take out, and delivery–all readily available. I have no need to cook.

Last fall I decided I wanted to lose a few pounds so I hired one of those “personal chef” food delivery services. You know the ones that are advertised on television, three meals and two snacks delivered to your door every day. I loved it. The food was good and I didn’t have to think about it.

In just a few weeks I lost the weight I wanted to lose but I was enjoying the convenience of the service so much I decided I wanted to keep it. I called and spoke with the owner, asking if I could sign up for several months, or six months, or even a year. He said, “no,” I could only sign up for 40 days at a time.

Marketing Insensitive #1: Making customers make buying decisions more frequently than they have to.

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by Dan Coughlin

What is an Economic Trend?

You probably have a more technical definition of an economic trend than I do, but here’s mine. An economic trend is a bunch of dots. If you took all of the economic performances of all of the businesses around the world on a given day and averaged them into a single dot, then you would have the beginning of a trend. If you did that every day for several weeks, months, and years, then you would have a bunch of dots. You could then draw a best-fit curve that represents the flow of the dots. At that point you could say, “We’re heading into a recession,” or “We’re in a recession,” You could then use either of those statements to justify slowing down spending to save capital and to stop investing in creating innovative ways to add more value to customers.

I suggest you don’t do that.

The Importance of Perseverance and Perspective

The more important factor in determining your long-term success as a business is not how the dots are trending, but rather your willingness and the willingness of the people in your business to persevere and sustain your focus on creating value for your customers and prospective customers. I’ll talk more about perseverance in a moment.

The current economic trend needs to be kept in perspective. I spoke nine weeks ago at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples, Florida to a group of business owners about the psychology of the economy. As I was talking about the impact of the recession, I almost started giggling. Here I was standing at a beautiful hotel in a beautiful city talking about a recession with a group of folks who were going to play golf that afternoon on a beautiful course.

This recession is not The Great Depression. My parents were born in 1928 and 1929. They literally grew up in The Great Depression. My grandfathers literally worked their butts off to get any money to put food on the table.

We’re still living in some of the very best economic times in the history of the world. They may not be as amazing as they were three years ago, but they are still pretty spectacular. In the U.S., we all got a little too caught up in the housing boom and now we’re paying for it. Just like when we got a little too caught up in the dot-com boom of 1999 and the gold rush boom of 1890. When we start thinking irrationally and assume we’ve find the secret to easy wealth, we do some pretty silly things and then we pay for it. But we’re going to be okay. That is, we’re going to be okay if we don’t talk ourselves out of future successes. Continue Reading »

by Jack Mitchell, author of Hug Your People

I’m told that many, even most, companies maintain thick employee handbooks jam-packed with all shapes and types of rules — rules about when you come to work and when you leave, rules about how often you get a break, rules about coarse language, rules about penalties for defacing bulletin boards, rules about this, that, and everything, so many that even the person who wrote them couldn’t possibly know them all. Every year or so, they make revisions to the handbook, usually sticking in still more rules but rarely, if ever, discarding or updating any of them to reflect a changing world. So you have a business drowning in rules that no one can remember, including the managers who dreamed them up.

In this regard, companies are as bad as governments. I’m always reminded of this when I read about some antiquated local or state law that never got updated for common sense. For instance, South Carolina has a two-hundred-year-old law banning games with cards or dice — even in your own home. So I guess the police can bust in and haul you and the kids to the pen for playing Monopoly or Go Fish! Continue Reading »

by Kelley Robertson

Let’s face it. We all have those difficult customers to whom we are required to sell. From the demanding, abrasive buyer to the individual who never seems to make a buying decision, we encounter challenging people on a regular basis. Part of the reason this happens is due to the disconnect we have because of conflicting personalities. This article will look at the four key types of people and how to improve your results with each.

Direct Donna. Donna is very direct in her approach. She tends to be forceful and always wants to dominate or control the sales call. Her behavior is aggressive, she points at you while she talks, interrupts your to challenge you, and she seldom cares about hearing the details of your new product or service. Instead, she demands that you cut to the chase and tell me the bottom line. Donna is very results-focused and goal-oriented and hates wasting time.

To achieve the best sales results with this individual you need to be more direct and assertive. Tell her at the beginning of the sales call or meeting that you know how busy she is and how valuable her time is. Tell her that you will get right to the point and focus your conversation on the results she will achieve by using you product or service. Resist the temptation to back down if she confronts you because you will lose her respect. To Donna, it is not personal, it’s just business.
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by Steven S. Little

The story I’m about to tell you is true.

A few years ago I traveled to Baltimore, Maryland, for a speaking engagement. Anyone who travels for business knows that it is hardly glamorous. After 9/11, however, it became even more frustrating, and it keeps getting worse. I don’t think I’d be overstating it to say that business travel today is horrific: irretrievably lost luggage, annoying security searches, perpetually oversold flights, infuriating rental car policies, frazzled counter staff . . . I think you get the picture.

Despite all the traumas of travel, I decided a few years ago to always keep a smile on my face. The way I look at it: if the business travel industry gets the best of me, they win and I lose. I just can’t allow that to happen.

I keep a smile on my face by keeping my eye on a prize. My prize at the end of every business travel day is a vanilla milkshake . . . a thick, gooey, luscious, indulgent vanilla milkshake. I’m talking a hand-dipped, old-fashioned, malt-shoppy kind of milkshake. I don’t just like ’em; I love ’em. Both my career and my mental well-being literally depend on them. The image of that milkshake is the proverbial dangling carrot that gets me through even the worst travel day.

It had been a particularly difficult day of planes, trains, and automobiles. I was to arrive at the Baltimore/Washington International (BWI) Airport at 7:00 P.M . for dinner with my clients at 8:00 P.M . Unfortunately, I arrived at midnight. In other words, there was nothing out of the ordinary so far.

I grabbed my bags and stood in a long taxicab line to take the 20-minute ride to Baltimore’s beautiful Inner Harbor. I was cold, wet, tired, and hungry, but smiling, because I was going to get that vanilla milkshake.

When I finally got to my room an hour later the first thing I did was call room service where I was greeted by Stuart.
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by Tessa Stowe

I’d like you to take a moment right now and, before you continue reading this article, decide whether you think selling is simple or complicated? Please now read on.

Before I start to specifically talk about selling, I’d like to first discuss ‘complicated’ versus ’simple’.

In the past we have been taught to respect and value the ‘complicated.’ Whole industries have cropped up to make complicated products, to convince us we need these complicated products and to then help us use these complicated products.

On the other hand, in the past we have not respected or valued the ’simple’. The simple is seen as common sense and by definition, since it’s ‘common’ sense, it’s perceived value is diminished.

The absolute irony is that to make something complicated is simple and to make something simple is complicated! To make something simple requires a lot of effort and skill. To make something simple often requires a lot more time and expense than to make it complicated.

Recently people have started to demand the simple in their lives and are seeing the value in simple. Simplicity now sells and people are even starting to pay more money for the simple.

Now let’s come back to selling and whether it is complicated or simple.

I think that not only have we been convinced that selling is complicated but we also use the perspective that selling is complicated as an excuse. Let me explain further.

We have been told that selling is complicated. We have been convinced that:

* As the products we are selling get more and more complicated, the selling of these complicated products must by definition get more complicated as well.
* As the number of people involved in making a single purchasing decision increases, the more complicated the selling becomes.
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by Brian Tracy

To improve your sales performance, adopt the Golden Rule mentality. The Golden Rule says to, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It also says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The Golden Rule mentality in sales, says simply, “Sell unto others as you would have them sell unto you.”

Different Strokes For Different Folks
What does this mean? Aren’t there all kinds of different personalities that require different approaches and techniques? Well, yes and no. Practicing the golden rule in selling simply means that you sell to other people the way you would like to be sold to. You sell with the same honesty, integrity, understanding, empathy and thoughtfulness that you would like someone else to use in selling to you.

Seek First to Understand
If you would like a salesperson to take the time to thoroughly understand you and your situation before making a recommendation, you practice the same thing with your customers. If you would like a salesperson to give you honest information and to help you make an intelligent buying decision, you practice the same with your customer. If you would like a salesperson to be thoroughly knowledgeable about the strengths or weaknesses of his or her product or service, and that of his or her competitors, then you do the same with your product or service and your competitors. Continue Reading »